


Open Wounds

by Masu_Trout



Category: Vampyr (Video Game)
Genre: Blood Drinking, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pining, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:07:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22609777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout
Summary: McCullum had dragged him to this safehouse—how long had that taken, with a wounded and insensate man stumbling along beside him? How far had he been forced to walk with Jonathan's arm slung over his shoulder, ignoring the feeling of a vampire's blood seeping onto his clothes and skin as he tried to race the morning light?Geoffrey and a starving, wounded Jonathan, trapped in a safehouse together.
Relationships: Geoffrey McCullum/Jonathan Reid
Comments: 14
Kudos: 281
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Open Wounds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linndechir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/gifts).



Dawn was breaking. Jonathan could feel the sun's first rays through the thin walls and boarded-up windows of his dilapidated safehouse. They sunk down to his bones, leaving him sluggish and tired, and it would be so easy just to let his body relax, to sink for a moment to the ground and not worry about standing up again—

"Get up," snarled a voice in his ear. "Come on, I know you can walk. Carrying you is like rubbing my hands all over a corpse."

Strong arms (warm, living arms, flush with blood and drumming with a heady pulse and _no_ ) grabbed Jonathan and hauled him something close to upright. He took two steps, stumbled, fell to the floor; McCullum snarled out a " _Goddamnit_ , Reid," and hauled him upright again.

If his body were cooperating, Jonathan would've smiled; apparently he was _Reid_ again. He'd gone back to being _leech_ for a few minutes during their fight against the skal pack, after he'd taken a few especially nasty bites from two of the most hunger-maddened of the group. McCullum's go-to insult during a battle was leech, and when he was well and truly furious he'd throw it at any vampire in the vicinity regardless of whether they were friend or foe. 

(McCullum would tell him it was no mistake, Jonathan was sure, that he didn't consider any vampire a _friend_ , but he'd also not only abstained from trying to murder Jonathan for three months straight but also allowed Jonathan to join him on his nightly patrols with only a few threats to his person. As far as Jonathan could tell, that put him above not only every other vampire in the world but also no small number of mortal men in McCullum's estimation.)

Jonathan was sure he ought to be insulted. Somehow, he found it endearing.

He tried to tell McCullum so, but again his body refused to obey him; the most he could manage was a quiet rasping growl. His fangs felt heavy in his mouth, his limbs as stiff and uncooperative as a true corpse's, and every time he closed his eyes it was a struggle to summon up the willpower to open them again.

It would be so pleasant to sleep. Why shouldn't he sleep?

The world faded around him for a moment, going from shadows to true darkness, and it was McCullum's hand against his face, a sharp sudden _crack_ , that startled him back to awareness. 

"Come on, you bastard. Don't you dare make me have dragged you back here for nothing."

He was on the floor now. Somehow he'd ended up there in the space between his eyes closing and opening again. His head rested against the half-rotten boards, his eyes looked up towards the ceiling and McCullum's face both. 

One was much closer than the other. McCullum was kneeling over him, fumbling at the buttons of his vest.

Jonathan fought weakly against his hands. He trusted McCullum, perhaps more than he should—more than any man of his particular _condition_ should trust someone sworn to hunt his kind—but there was a difference between standing back-to-back with McCullum on the battlefield and lying helpless before him like this. But all McCullum did was bat away Jonathan's sad attemps at defending himself before turning his attention to his clothes once more. 

"Honestly, beast," he said, sounding somewhere between annoyed and worried, "do you always try to let other leeches get the jump on you like that, or did you just forget what one's teeth felt like since the last time you got bit?" He parted Reid's vest and the undershirt beneath, snarling out a curse as he did. His hands, when he pulled them back, were sticky with dark blood. 

Not a human's; Jonathan would have caught the scent far earlier if it were. He could smell skal blood, cold and grotesquely sweet with the aroma of infection, and—above it, overpowering everything else—a scent more familiar to Jonathan than any other, so familiar that at first he hadn't recognized it for anything abnormal. His own blood, smeared across McCullum's hands.

Of course. The bites. Worse than he'd realized, it seemed. The adrenaline must've drowned out the pain.

Fear gave him energy: he pushed himself up on one elbow to better meet McCullum's eyes and rasped out, "Don't—that's dangerous. You shouldn't..."

If McCullum accidentally touched a hand to his mouth, if he had a cut on his hand he'd failed to notice... 

Jonathan didn't think a smear would be enough. He hoped it wouldn't be. But there had been Mary, Mary who he'd had to watch die twice, and he couldn't bear to harm anyone that way again. Especially not McCullum—for all he loved to drive Jonathan to tooth-grinding frustration, there were few people he could name who were as vibrantly, overwhelmingly alive as him.

London was sorely lacking honorable men. Jonathan didn't want to thin their number any further.

McCullum only laughed harshly. There was a trunk near them, covered in a thick later of dust; he popped the lid, rummaged through it for a moment, and then pulled out some poor stranger's shirt to wipe his hands clean. "Now you're worried about blood? You could have thought of that before you left yourself open to some crazed leech's attack." Scowling, he added, "Just because you're a creature like them doesn't make you an expert in how they fight. _I'm_ the Guard member among us."

"And a mortal man as well," Jonathan managed.

The pair of skals had borne down on McCullum, aiming for his exposed neck while he was distracted finishing off another of their pack. Back turned, caught in his own battle, he would've made an easy target; protecting him had been the obvious strategic choice, and yet Jonathan had not thought about _strategy_ for even a moment before putting himself between McCullum and those claws and teeth. It had been pure instinct, as easy and as natural as calling shadows to his aid or finding a vein under the skin.

"You're as quick to underestimate humanity as the rest of your kind. I can fight my own battles without a leech getting in the way."

"Understood," Jonathan said. "I'll—take it into consideration."

He let himself fall back against the wood floor and curled around his wound, away from the boarded windows and the threat of the sun beyond them. McCullum had dragged him here—how long had that taken, with a wounded and insensate man stumbling along beside him? How far had he been forced to walk with Jonathan's arm slung over his shoulder, ignoring the feeling of a vampire's blood seeping onto his clothes and skin as he tried to race the morning light?

McCullum could've put a stake through his heart, or else left Jonathan there on the street for the sunlight to find. Either would have been a far easier option. The option any Priwen member ought to take. That he'd instead protected him was more than enough to blunt the barbed and vicious edge to his words.

There was a pause then, the only sounds the creaking of the house around them and McCullum's blood pounding in his veins. Finally, McCullum said, "Look. I'm no doctor, and _especially_ not a doctor for leeches, but—is there anything you need? To keep from being a pain in my arse any longer than you absolutely have to be, I mean."

Jonathan shook his head. "Nothing you'd be willing to do, trust me."

He already missed his room at Pembroke, with walls thick enough to feel secure and a proper bed to sleep away the day in, but there was nothing he could do about it now. The sunlight might not be able to burn him here, but even the warmth of it in the air and the thin light that filtered past the boards was enough to leave him sluggish and weak and hobble his healing factor. Without intervention, he had no choice but to grit his teeth bear the pain, hope that the injury wouldn't worsen any further until night came again... and the kind of _intervention_ he needed wasn't anything he'd ever dare ask for from McCullum. He had no desire to see his head adorning a Priwen safehouse's doorway.

McCullum snorted. "Try me."

"McCullum..."

"Come on now, leech got your tongue? I don't exactly have time to spare playing nanny."

"I don't intend to force you to stay."

" _Reid_." Grimacing, McCullum turned his stare towards the far wall. There was a flush to his cheeks; Jonathan could see the blood pumping quick under the skin there, healthy and vibrant and _so close_ to the skin. "I'm not willing to leave a wounded vampire to its own devices. I've seen what your kind can do when they're hungry."

It was hardly a believable excuse—for one, Reid was less capable of violence now than he'd been any other night the two of them had oh-so-coincidentally found themselves walking the same patrol route, and that had never prevented McCullum from letting them part ways when their duty was done before—but he let the lie slide. Instead he said, a snarl to his voice, "Then you know what it is I need right now."

"I'd say I could offer a fair guess." Idly, almost unconsciously, McCullum let one hand trace across the veins along the inside the other wrist. 

_Blood_. Jonathan pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth, trying to soothe the hunger-ache in his fangs. "You'd be right. And if it's all the same to you, I'd rather be left alone here than mocked."

A vampire feeding was a vile thing to witness; even if he weren't part of the Guard of Priwen, Jonathan wouldn't have blamed McCullum in the slightest for being disgusted by it. But having his hunger taunted, being forced to give it a name... Jonathan couldn't say he enjoyed it For all he might sigh at McCullum's jabs towards his _true nature_ , he respected the man more than most people he knew—trusted him, even, in spite of his better instincts. McCullum was the last person who needed to see him like this, weak and pale-faced and desperate for blood.

Another sigh from McCullum, this one heavier and more long-suffering than the last. With one hand, he drew a slim, silver-handled knife from its sheath on his belt. 

Jonathan tensed, eyeing the weapon. The blade was clean, but the scent of old blood—Skal and Vulkod and Ekon alike—clung to it even still. Too many vampires had died to its edge for the smell to ever truly wash away.

He tried to call forth shadows and felt no response. No blood to rely on, no cover of darkness to flee to; he had his teeth and his claws and his wits, and none of those felt a suitable match against the man in front of him.

He'd seen McCullum use the blade before during their patrols: plunging into the neck of a well-dressed vampire who'd hunted the homeless for sport, putting down a skal so rotted and miserable it didn't even try to avoid the strike. But Jonathan hadn't expected—

McCullum brought the blade down on his own skin, dragging the edge of it against his forearm until blood welled up.

" _Geoffrey_ ," Jonathan snarled, slapping a hand over his own mouth to try to block out the scent. 

It did nothing, of course it did nothing, he could've been on the other side of the city and still sensed that blood. McCullum's blood was intoxicating, vibrant and healthy and strong, rich with the twin flavors of iron and salt. And, deeper than that, a flavor that only a vampire could understand: it carried the life of someone Jonathan _knew_ , someone he understood and trusted.

Jonathan could work in the surgical theatre, could have blood slicked up to his elbows without feeling the slightest hunger. McCullum was a temptation on an entirely different level.

"What are you _doing_?" he asked from behind the barrier of his fingers. It was a trap, a test of some sort, but what its purpose might be Jonathan couldn't guess.

"What does it look like?" McCullum returned stiffly. By now, blood had begun spilling over the edges of the cut. Jonathan's eyes followed the droplets' path across McCullum's forearm entirely without his mind's permission. "Don't start acting squeamish on me _now_. I know you eat."

"I don't..."

"Come on." McCullum thrust his outstretched arm closer to Jonathan's mouth. His face was even more flushed than before. "I'm not letting you leave me with a bite scar, so this is the best you're getting. Might not be a fancy enough meal for a gentleman like yourself"—his lip curled—"but I'm sure you'll manage."

"You can't be serious."

"You can't heal yourself, you can't leave the room, and I can think of a few hundred things I'd rather do than be stuck in an enclosed space with a leech all day. That's all."

 _That's all_. As if McCullum didn't have a few hundred other options he could take—should've taken, according to his oath to Priwen—before offering up his own blood to the enemy. (And Jonathan had seen Priwen's brand of justice before; those hundreds of options started with putting that knife through his jugular and worked their way upwards in terms of brutality.) For him to do this...

Perhaps it was a trap. But Jonathan couldn't resist the scent of McCullum's blood—and he couldn't deny the voice in the back of his mind, as much instinct as thought, telling him that this was exactly what it looked like. 

Jonathan pulled his hand away from his face. He said, haltingly, "Geoffrey. Thank you," and then he dragged himself forward to press his mouth to the seam of the wound.

The taste of it, the heat—it coated Jonathan's tongue and throat, left him gasping for breath he didn't truly need. He licked his way up the edge of the wound, chased each wayward drop of blood, teased the edge of the cut with his tongue to try and coax even that smallest bit more out. He was as desperate as any stray dog finding a scrap of meat, every bit the beast McCullum said he was, and there was nothing in the world he wanted to do less than stop. He was beyond shame.

Flashes of memory burst behind his eyelids as he drank, sharp and disconnected, more the imprints of emotion than anything concrete—disgust and hatred; _fucking leeches_ ; wrapping his calloused fingers around the stock of a gun; a child's panicked sobbing as something that wasn't his father anymore rose from the floor with its mouth red and bloody—and it was so little but he knew he could have more of McCullum if he just bit down, could know every secret corner of his mind...

Jonathan gasped, and pulled away, and wiped his hand across his beard and the back of his mouth. One last fragment of thought flitted through his head: Jonathan standing in the street, pale and drawn with his fangs extended, the way he must look through McCullum's eyes, and with it a brief flash of—

 _Oh_ , Jonathan thought, feeling that rapid-fire pang of _lust-anger-want_ as intensely as McCullum had once felt it.

He wasn't supposed to have seen that. There was no chance that McCullum would've offered a vein if he'd known Jonathan might get this from it: heat pooling in his stomach and flooding his veins, a moment spent wondering just how the leech ( _Jonathan_ ) might react if he pushed him up against the wall and pressed his mouth to those cold dead lips before he stamped the urge down with a vicious pang of shame. 

Jonathan didn't know what to think. What to _say_. So he snapped his mouth shut and said nothing at all. 

McCullum stared down at his forearm and the wound there for a moment longer, then rolled his sleeve back down to cover it. His face was pale. His fingers drummed against his clothing restlessly. "Welcome back, Reid. Have you gotten yourself under control?"

"I. Yes. Thank you."

"For a moment there I thought I was about to have to put a stake in you."

He'd very nearly needed to. Jonathan swallowed down the last of the blood clinging to the inside of his mouth, tried not to think of where he could get more. "It would've been a hardship, I'm sure."

He'd expected to get a laugh out of McCullum, or maybe some bravado. Instead, his mouth turned down into a scowl. "I didn't spend all this time hauling your corpse around just to have to turn around and stake you. I..." A pause, and then he shook his head. "You're useful enough, I suppose, for fighting the rest of your kind. And I'll end you myself once you _stop_ being useful, but until then don't get yourself killed. All right?"

"Coming from you, that's higher praise than I ever expected." Jonathan grinned. "How about a deal? I'll do my best to avoid dying without your permission if you promise me the same in return." 

He dug his clawed fingers into his own chest until McCullum's borrowed blood welled up around the wound: a sacrifice. Blood for flesh. Life for life. He breathed in deep just to feel his lungs expand and let the blood spill over, felt the bite marks and torn-to-shreds skin begin to knit themselves back together as his powers went to work. 

He'd forgotten just how _good_ it felt to be whole.

McCullum snorted, eyeing the healing wounds skeptically. "Not all of us have fancy tricks to fall back on, you know."

"No, some of us just have a citizen's army of devoted followers responding to our every order."

"Ha! Fair enough, I suppose. I prefer my advantages to yours, anyway. Less chewing on corpses and sewer rats."

The two of them were very close, even now. McCullum would only to move his hand a few inches to rest it on Jonathan's chest and the steadily-healing skin there. His fingers twitched, as if he just might try it—and then, with a flinch, he drew them away.

"Well, Reid," he said, "some of us have things we need to do during the day. If you're not about to bleed out anymore..." 

He stood, a little unsteadily, slid his knife back into its sheath and turned for the exit.

It would be safer to let him leave. In more ways than one. Whatever McCullum might truly think of him, down beneath the bluster and the snarling disdain for vampires, he was still Priwen's leader. There was every chance duty might win out against desire; he might decide to remove a _distraction_ like an overly-friendly vampire from his life in any way necessary.

(And if he didn't... that might be more dangerous still. Jonathan could still feel that last stolen memory as strongly as if he'd lived it—his human heart pumping blood, his human body tangled up in wanting. There could be nothing good awaiting a vampire and a hunter who allowed themselves to grow too attached.)

But _safe_ hadn't been part of Jonathan's life for a very long time now, and he didn't intend to start living his life in fear. He lifted a hand towards McCullum and said, "Wait. Stay."

"Reid..."

"Just for a little while. You're bleeding still, and don't think I didn't notice you're limping." He gestured towards his stash of supplies, kept tucked in one corner of the room. His safehouses always ended up being useful eventually. "Let me return the favor."

McCullum sucked in a breath. He stared down at Jonathan, his expression unreadable, and then he sighed and said, "Fine. _Fine_. But if you try to get another bite in, I _will_ put you down."

As if he hadn't offered his blood freely. Jonathan said, "I am still a doctor, you know."

"Trust me, I'm aware. And I'm still as happy about a leech running loose in a hospital as I ever was." His words were barbed, but there was no real bite to his tone. He turned away from the doorway with hardly any reluctance, stood there as if he was waiting for what Jonathan might do next.

They had a truce between them, hunter and beast, a hesitant and fragile thing—but perhaps not so fragile as Jonathan had once worried it might be. 

"Come," Jonathan said, motioning to a spot on the floor next to him. "Sit."

And McCullum did, and rolled up the leg of his trousers to show off the bruise there with hardly a complaint. And if he shivered when Jonathan's hands touched his skin, in a way that might have been disgust or might have been something else entirely—Jonathan didn't mention it. 

He was a vampire, after all. He'd learned how to wait. And this was something worth his patience.


End file.
